In December 2008 STC-backed Viva Kuwait launched as the country’s third mobile operator. Incumbents Zain and Wataniya had waged a long war of words expressing scepticism for the need of a third player in the country of 3.4 million inhabitants. A year on and Viva is successfully carving out a niche for itself, and its CEO Najeeb Al Awadi sees no reason why it should not aim for the top spot

Najeeb Al Awadi says Viva is looking to garner a market share of 30-33 per cent as soon as possible, and sees no reason why it shouldn’t target the top spot

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The GSM Association’s primary reason for being is to lobby for the interests of mobile operators, most of them with a GSM heritage, in a rapidly evolving landscape. Ricardo Tavares, senior vice president at the GSMA believes HSPA has a particular resonance in markets in the Middle East given the pent-up demand for Internet access and the relatively high penetration of mobile handsets

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Mobile gaming services have long held revenue-generating potential for operators and developers alike, though the construction of a viable ecosystem has been longer in the making. With the development of appropriate terminals, the greater amount of social networking taking place across mobile devices, and an evolved charging regime, the coming 12 months are set to witness strong mobile gaming activity

At the end of October, Nokia announced the closure of its N-Gage store, which was specifically designed to sell games for Nokia phones. Many lessons have been learnt in the mobile gaming space since the first N-Gage device was introduced in 2003

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In the past three years Qtel Group has matured into a pre-eminent operator having initially been considered one of the losers of the rapid M&A activity that had erupted in the Gulf a few years earlier. Speaking to Comm., Nasser Marafih, Qtel Group’s CEO talks of domestic competition prudent investment considerations and why sub-Sahara Africa is of little interest to the operator

Marafih says things have pretty much been as the telco expected with respect to the offers that Vodafone has come to market with

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Qualcomm will celebrate its quarter century next year, and will have much to look back and be proud of. Not only did it develop and deploy CDMA wireless technology at a time when not many believed in the viability of the technology, it has gone on to become a US$70 billion plus market capitalised company, and one of the world’s most profitable. Reporting from San Diego, Comm. considers the strategies Qualcomm is employing in order to maintain the significant momentum it has garnered over the past 24 years, and considers the company’s roadmap for the future

Paul Jacobs says he sees significant scope for the telecom industry and Qualcomm to ebenfit from the uptake of mobile broadband, mobile computing, and healthcare

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